Resisting fascism: The Argentine Junta de la Victoria and its president, 1941-1955.

Created in 1941, the Junta de la Victoria (Victory Board, JV) was a Popular Front movement that supplied the Allies. It attracted about 45,000 diverse women throughout Argentina. The JV challenged local fascism by modelling a genuine democracy based on pluralism, intersectional solidarity, freedom, and women's political incorporation. Members created ties across social differences. The JV's promotion of multiculturalism facilitated a shift from the Argentine ideal of a melting pot to one of ethnic diversity. Its president, Ana Rosa Schlieper, seemed an unlikely resistance fighter. Initially her main identities were those of wife, philanthropist, and upper-class socialite. Her whiteness, beauty, and charm enhanced her prestige. In the mid-1930s Schlieper added antifascist and feminist to her intertwined identities. Seizing power in 1943, military officers suppressed the JV, seeing it as a communist organisation. Some Argentine and U.S. officials accused Schlieper of being a communist dupe, although she was loyal to the democratic centrist Radical party. Under populist president Juan Perón (1946-1955), her class and political identities became liabilities. Peronist hegemony and fear of being identified with an anti-Peronist and leftist group obliterated the public memory of Schlieper and the JV until recently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]